


To Ease The Ache

by gnimaerd



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 20:46:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3354743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnimaerd/pseuds/gnimaerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laurel and Nyssa find comfort in each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Ease The Ache

“I'm not her,” Laurel murmurs, after Nyssa kisses her.  
  


“A fact of which I am painfully aware.”  


Ouch, Laurel thinks, and then lets Nyssa kiss her again – because why the fuck not.  
  


“I am not her either, you know,” Nyssa says, later, when they're in bed and Laurel's sheets feel strange and sweaty and unfamiliar around this unfamiliar woman.  
  


Laurel glances at her. She's been avoiding making eye contact for a while, trying to collect her thoughts, to decide whether she's going to spend the next half an hour crying or whether she should just find this whole encounter hysterically funny – since Sara's death, the boundaries between one extreme of emotion and another have felt perilously thin. “What, exactly, are you implying about my relationship with my sister?”  
  


Nyssa snorts. “We're each seeking closeness to her through the other, are we not?”  
  


Her accent is odd – it's sort of British but the intonation's wrong. English can't be her first language, but she sounds like she's been taught it by someone from a 1900s period drama.  
  


“I guess,” Laurel slides down, onto her side, putting her back to Nyssa. She wants to be alone, now, really, please.  
  


“Then you should know that I can no more provide you with her company than you can provide me with hers.”  
  


“Yeah, I got that.”  
  


Laurel draws the sheets up to her shoulders. She's cold. The bed feels cold.  
  


Nyssa gazes at her for a moment – Laurel can feel her, that implacable, unreadable look. “Would you like me to leave?”  
  


“You can do whatever you want.”  
  


“Then I am going to use your shower.”  
  


Laurel listens to her moving around, and falls asleep to the sound of the water running in her en suit. Her apartment is empty by the time she wakes up in the small hours of the morning – that's another thing that's happened since Sara's death. Not sleeping. She's awake, her mind churning, by 4AM most days, without much hope of dropping off again.  
  


She gets up in the dark, and realises that she smells like Nyssa – a faintly expensive perfume fading on her skin. The shower smells like her too.  
  


What she's not expecting, after she's done her morning run and showered again and made herself an egg white omelette and a protein shake, is to discover the note on her kitchen counter top – Nyssa's handwriting is weirdly exactly what she'd expect. A looping, elegant cursive that Laurel has to spend ten minutes deciphering before she realises that it's a phone number with 'if you need me' written beneath it.  
  


Laurel doesn't dwell on what Nyssa might possibly think she'd need her for, exactly – but she folds the note and puts it into her bedside drawer. It might be useful, she supposes.  
  


And for some reason, the next time she wants to drink, she calls Nyssa instead of her sponsor.  
  


Nyssa sounds like she's somewhere very remote. There's a noise in the background that might be the wind or an ocean. But she talks to Laurel for three hours – mostly about Sara, about the little stone house they shared in Nanda Parbat, about the books they read and the stray cats they took in – and somehow Laurel is soothed.  
  


It hurts, of course, but it's the sort of hurt a muscle has when it's growing, an ache she's familiar with from long sessions in the gym – a hurt that means change, means strength is coming.


End file.
